HEADLINES
hederkoorn — hoping for a DASA thumbs up
from DASA is "urgent", because
it wants a launch within weeks
to meet its timescale to have the
Fokker 70 flying by 1994.
DASA says that Nederkoorn's
position is "his problem, not
ours", and that, as far as the
Regioliner is concerned, "...we
are going ahead as planned".
• Launch of the 130-seat Airbus
A319 airliner is being held up by
a wrangle between Germany's
Deutsche Aerospace and
France's Aeropatiale over the sit
ing of the aircraft's assembly
line. The argument is a re-run of
the A3 21 debate which eventu
ally saw DASA win the right to
have the aircraft assembled in
Hamburg — the first Airbus
assembled outside of France. •
Canada cuts defence
Canada is to cut its defence budget once again, but offi
cials say that the EH. 101 New
Shipborne Aircraft (NSA) pro
gramme should survive.
Director of Air Requirements
Col Ross Betts says the budget
cut, C$2.2 billion ($1.8 billion)
over five years, will affect the
department's capital budget, but
that "...it will not result in a
massive rescoping exercise" for
the Air Command.
Betts says he believes the $4
billion NSA programme "...will
persevere", especially since there
is no obvious alternative to the
purchase of the EH.101.
The budgetary estimates ta
bled, however, by the Gov
ernment show that the anti
submarine warfare and search-
and-rescue elements of the pro
ject are initially being funded
separately. •
West gets Russian ATC Mayday
BY ALAN GEORGE
Russian air traffic controllers have been sending urgent
radio messages to over-flying
western aircraft, warning that
equipment failures are endanger
ing safety and appealing for
international assistance in up
grading systems.
The messages underline the
poor condition of Russian air
traffic control systems, although
the appeals could be linked to
industrial relations problems.
Flight International has ob
tained a transcript of an extraor
dinary tape recording of one
such appeal to a Tokyo-bound
Japan Air Lines Boeing 747. The
message, broadcast at 02.26GMT
on 9 February, was sent by the
ground-control station at Tura,
in central Siberia. It was relayed
to the Japanese aircraft, Flight
402, to London's Heathrow Air
port, via a following Lufthansa
747 which, at the time, was over
the Ural mountains.
The ground station warned
BA/KLM seeks new potential partners
BY KEVIN O'TOOLE and at the riSnt time'" saYs BA
chairman Lord King. "There are
plenty of other deals around. We
are receiving approaches at the
rate of one per week."
When KLM emerges from its
review, the most likely front-
runner is the European Quality
Alliance (EQA), a co-operative
group of national flag-carriers
Swissair, Austrian Airlines
and SAS.
Discussions with EQA were
being held before the approach
from BA in October 1991 and
could now be resumed.
Bouw points out that KLM has
a young fleet with an average age
of only 5.3 years, while Schiphol
Airport offers a mainland Euro
pean hub with room for expan
sion. KLM also has a foothold
on the US West Coast with its
20% share in the loss-making
Northwest Airlines. •
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is rethinking the need for an
alliance in the short term, fol
lowing the breakdown of talks
with British Airways.
Had the BA/KLM talks suc
ceeded, it would have created
the world's fourth-largest airline
and marked the first merger
between European flag-carriers
in the run-up to air liberalisation
in the single European market.
KLM president Pieter Bouw sug
gests that such a merger is per
haps "ahead of its time".
Details of the merger were
virtually complete when the
talks collapsed. Disagreement
centred on how profits would be
split within a merged company.
BA was pushing for at least an
80% share, reflecting its profit
ability and shareholder value in
relation to the smaller Dutch
carrie-r. The claim was reinforced
with BA's surprise third-quarter
profits of £100 million. For the
nine months to the end of De
cember, BA profits totalled £285
million ($505 million) com
pared with FL320 million ($175
million) at KLM.
KLM, however, was anxious
to retain an independent iden
tity. It was therefore holding out
for a 40% share in the new
company, arguing also that it
would bring other assets to the
merger, which increased its
worth above a straight measure
of market value.
"When we are ready to do a
deal, it will be at the right price
King — keeping his ears open for the
right approach
that "ageing equipment" on Air
way Red 30 was not working
and it was "...unable to ensure
flight safety". The airway is the
increasingly busy main east-west
air route across Russia.
"It is necessary to change our
equipment," the message contin
ues, "...but we are not provided
from Moscow; neither the equip
ment nor the money to develop
our facility."
The declaration, allegedly is
sued in the name of Andrei
Chernov, director of Tura Aer-
oflot Enterprise (the local divi
sion of Aeroflot), requests the
International Civil Aviation Or
ganisation (ICAO) to "...send
their experts to visit our facility
and to reach their own inde
pendent conclusions".
Explaining that the message
had been prompted by "the in
crease in flight intensities", the
Tura controller stressed that it
was "very urgent".
Montreal-based ICAO say that
they know nothing of the mes
sage, and a Japan Air Lines says
that the company and Lufthansa
have conveyed it to the Interna
tional Air Transport Association
(IATA), in Geneva. IATA de
clines to comment.
The Tura appeal, however, is
consistent with the known con
dition of Russia's air traffic con
trol system. The situation was
underlined in 1991 in a report
on aviation, published by the
US-based Center for Strategic
and International Studies.
This quoted Aleksandr Ye-
fimov, head of Gosaeronavigat-
siya, a now-defunct state
commission responsible for the
control of Soviet airspace, as
saying that the great majority of
air traffic control installations
were "noticeably behind in the
extent of technical equipment
and facilities" and that over half
of them "...do not meet modern
requirements".
Alenia of Italy recently won a
contract to modernise ATC cen
tres at Omsk and Novosibirsk
and a US/German/Japanese con
sortium, known as Global Air
Transportation Systems and
Services, is close to signing a
letter of intent to update large
parts of the ATC system. •
FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 4 - 10 March, 1992 5